LM_DLM_replication_codebook.txt
Codebook for replication data for:
"A Dynamic Linear Modeling Approach to Public Policy Change" by
Matt W. Loftis and Peter B. Mortensen
Direct inquiries to: mattwloftis@gmail.com
July 2017

def_change - Percentage change in defense spending from the previous year
    From: Bryan D. Jones, László Zalányi and Péter Érdi. 2014. "An Integrated Theory of Budgetary Politics and Some Empirical Tests: The U.S. National Budget, 1791-2010." American Journal of Political Science. 58(3): 561-578.

lag_level - One-year lagged actual defense spending in constant USD
    From: Bryan D. Jones, László Zalányi and Péter Érdi. 2014. "An Integrated Theory of Budgetary Politics and Some Empirical Tests: The U.S. National Budget, 1791-2010." American Journal of Political Science. 58(3): 561-578.

aid - US foreign aid spending in constant USD
    From: Bryan D. Jones, László Zalányi and Péter Érdi. 2014. "An Integrated Theory of Budgetary Politics and Some Empirical Tests: The U.S. National Budget, 1791-2010." American Journal of Political Science. 58(3): 561-578.

war_tension - Indicator taking value of 1 in periods of war (i.e. Korean War, Vietnam War, Reagan buildup, first Gulf war, and 2001 onward)

host_lev - Summed annual intensity of all U.S. militarized interstate disputes
    From: Palmer, Glenn, Vito D’Orazio, Michael Kenwick & Matthew Lane. 2015. "The MID4 dataset, 20022010: Procedures, coding rules and description." Conflict Management and Peace Science. 32(2):222–242.

lag_ideo - Lagged polarization in the House of Representatives, i.e. mean DW-NOMINATE score on first dimension
    From: Rosenthal, Howard & Keith Poole. 2015. "House Polarization 1st to 113th Congresses." URL: ftp://voteview.com/house polarization46 113.txt

chg_gdp - Percentage change in GDP from previous year
    From: Economic Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, URL: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2

lagMIP16 - Percentage of Americans saying foreign affairs is an important problem
    From: Public opinion data originally collected by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, with support of National Science Foundation grants SBR 9320922 and 0111611, distributed through Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Neither NSF nor the original collectors of the data bear any responsibility for the analysis reported here.

lag_unem - US national unemployment rate
    From: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, URL: https://www.bls.gov/cps/

election - Indicator taking value of 1 in years in which an incumbent competes in presidential election

lag_soviet - Lag Soviet defense spending assembled from U.S. intelligence reports

year - Four digit year of observation